ADB Provides $60 Million to Support Power Transmission Expansion in Eastern Afghanistan

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed a $60 million grant to provide more electricity for Afghan households, businesses, and industry by extending the national grid connectivity into eastern provinces and strengthening the northeast power system.

The grant agreement for the project was signed by ADB’s Deputy Country Director for Afghanistan Shanny Campbell, and Afghanistan Minister of Finance and ADB Governor Eklil Ahmad Hakimi. President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, parliamentarians, and senior government officials attended the signing.

The grant is financed through the Afghanistan Infrastructure Trust Fund (AITF). AITF, administered by ADB, is a donor-financed fund established in 2010 which aims to improve livelihoods of the Afghan people through infrastructure development. The project is part of an overall $1.2 billion Energy Supply Improvement Investment Program (2015-2024).

“Increased access to efficient and sustainable energy sources can help Afghanistan to meet its economic growth aspirations,” said Ms. Campbell. “The assistance signed, will support the government’s national energy supply program, which aims to expand power supply to boost economic growth and income opportunities.”

Energy demand in Afghanistan is increasing by almost twice its economic growth rate. Currently, 20 out of 34 provinces in Afghanistan are not connected to the power grid supply, which increases the cost of doing business and is detrimental to the environment.

The project will finance the construction of a 190-kilometer, 220-kilovolt transmission line between the capital Kabul and the Nangarhar provincial capital, Jalalabad. It will enable nearly 300 megawatts of grid power into Nangarhar and adjoining provinces. Phase 2 of this project will extend the power grid into Kunar province.

The transmission line would provide significant value addition to provide sustainable power to two industrial parks in eastern Afghanistan and enable grid stability by interconnection with transmission lines in adjoining provinces. In addition, the transmission line will have the capacity to energize an additional 300,000 new connections to residential, commercial, and industrial consumers.

ADB is Afghanistan’s largest official development partner in the energy sector. ADB has helped deliver electricity to more than 5 million people in Afghanistan. Over the coming years, ADB will support the increase in the country’s electrification rate from 30% to 83%, and lift the share of domestic generation from 20% to 67% by 2030. ADB will also play a major role in power transmission both regionally and domestically, and promote clean energy, including through solar power.

Discover the new Right to education handbook

Education is a fundamental human right of every
woman, man and child. However, millions are still deprived of educational
opportunities every day, many as a result of social, cultural and economic
factors.

UNESCO and the Right to Education Initiative
(RTE) recently released the Right to education handbook, a key tool for those seeking to understand and advance that right. It is
also an important reference for people working towards
achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 by offering guidance on how
to leverage legal commitment to the right to education.

Why is this handbook important?

The aim of this handbook is to make sure that
everyone enjoys their right to education. Its objective is not to present the
right to education as an abstract, conceptual, or purely legal concept, but
rather to be action-oriented. It provides practical guidance on how to
implement and monitor the right to education along with recommendations to
overcome persistent barriers. It seeks to do this by:

Increasing awareness and knowledge of the right to education. This
includes the normative angle of the right to education, states’ legal
obligations, the various sources of law, what states must do to implement
it, how to monitor it, and how to increase accountability.

Providing a summary of current debates and issues regarding education
and what human rights law says about them, including on forced migration,
education in emergencies, the privatization of education, and the
challenge of reaching the most marginalized.

Providing an overview of the UN landscape and its mechanisms,
including a clear understanding of the role of UNESCO and more generally the United Nations, as well as all relevant actors
in education, particularly civil society.

Who should use this handbook?

The handbook was developed to assist all stakeholders who have a crucial role to play
in the promotion and implementation of the right to education. This includes:

State officials, to ensure that education policies and practices are
better aligned with human rights.

Civil servants, policy-makers, ministers, and the ministry of
education staff, officials working in ministries and departments of
justice, development, finance, and statistics, as well as National Human
Rights Institutions.

Parliamentarians, their researchers and members of staff will find
this handbook useful in evaluating and formulating education, human rights,
and development legislation, and in implementing international human
rights commitments to national law.

Judges, magistrates, clerks, and lawyers and other judicial officials
can use the material to explain the legal obligations of the state and how
to apply them.

Civil society including NGOs, development organizations, academics,
researchers, teachers and journalists will benefit from this handbook as
it includes guidance on how to incorporate the right to education in
programmatic, research, and advocacy work.

Those who work for inter-governmental
organizations, including at key UN agencies, will find this handbook useful in
carrying out the mandate of their organizations. Private actors, multilateral
and bilateral donors, and investors can use this handbook to ensure their
involvement complies with human rights and that they understand and can apply
their specific responsibilities.

How to use this handbook?

The handbook was designed to be accessible. Each chapter starts with the key questions
addressed in the chapter and ends with a short summary consisting of key points
and ‘ask yourself’ questions, designed to make the reader think deeper about
issues raised in the chapter or to encourage people find out more about the
situation in their own country.

For more than 70 years, UNESCO has been
defending and advancing the right to education, which lies at the heart of its
mandate. It recently ran a digital campaign on the #RightToEducation to mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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IEA launches World Energy Outlook in China

Mr Li Ye, Executive Director General of China’s National Energy Agency speaks at the launch of the World Energy Outlook in China (Photograph: IEA)

IEA Chief Modeller Laura Cozzi launched the latest World Energy Outlook in Beijing on 23 January. The China launch brought together over 120 officials and experts drawn from government, academia and the power industry to discuss the latest global energy trends, and the outlook for the electricity.

During his opening remarks, Li Ye, Executive Director General of China’s National Energy Agency noted the strong IEA-China relationship that has delivered key results across a range of important areas of reform for China including: power market reform, distributed energy, renewables and gas market design.

At the IEA Ministerial meeting in 2015, China became one of the first countries to activate Association status with the Agency. Since then the IEA and China have been working closely together to achieve energy reform in China. In 2017, the IEA and China agreed a Three Year Work programme to boost energy policy analysis, promote clean energy systems, build capacity on energy regulation, and improve exchange of data on renewable energy and other resources. The launch in Beijing was organised by the China Electricity Power Planning and Engineering Institute, which hosts IEA’s China Liaison Office.

The IEA’s work with China includes collaboration to draw upon best international practice in carbon emissions trading, and power market reforms that enables renewable energy to make a greater contribution to electricity supply. Work is ongoing with Chinese counterparts as the new Five Year Plan, and longer-term plans, are put in place to accelerate China’s clean energy transition. The IEA will launch its latest work on China’s Power System Reform in Beijing on 25 February.

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The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), under the framework of The Egyptian Cotton Project, launched the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) pilot in the country to support the Egyptian Cotton branding as part of a renewed drive to increase product sustainability, improve working conditions along the supply chain, and support cotton growers and relevant institutions in paving the way towards the pilot’s national upscaling.

“The project’s vision is to pilot the BCI standard system in Egypt to advance the cotton industry in a way that cares for the environment and the farmers growing it, through a multi-stakeholder programme jointly coordinated by UNIDO, relevant governmental entities, farmers’ cooperatives, cotton and textile associations, and local and international private sector stakeholders,” said The Egyptian Cotton Project’s spokesperson.

The BCI will strengthen the competitiveness of the Egyptian textile industry in the global market through an holistic approach to sustainable cotton production which covers all three pillars of sustainability: environmental, social and economic. Farmers will receive trainings and those who meet rigorous levels of sustainable production and employee welfare will be granted the BCI standard.

Funded by the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation, the Egyptian Cotton project is implemented by UNIDO in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation as well as with local and international textile private sector stakeholders. It also leverages the “Cottonforlife” CSR initiative by Filmar Group.